I think everyone loves Testament because they didn't ever get hugely popular, and thus can still be considered "underground" by the legions of elitists who don't listen to anything that isn't "underground", keep in mind these people still LIKE "mainstream" music, they just won't ever admit it. Not even to themselves. That's not to say that I personally dislike Testament, but they most definitely aren't my favorite.

a: a use of language regarded as distinctive of a particular group <accent was&#8230;a shibboleth of social class &#8212; Vivian Ducat> b: a custom or usage regarded as distinguishing one group from others <for most of the well-to-do in the town, dinner was a shibboleth, its hour dividing mankind &#8212; Osbert Sitwell>

Worth mentioning the old testament tale revolving around the origin of "Shibboleth". As mentioned in the dictionary : "Etymology: Hebrew shibb&#333;leth stream; from the use of this word in Judg 12:6 as a test to distinguish Gileadites from Ephraimites "

The Ephraimites, as memory serves me, used to pronounce the word as "Sibolet" (which means in hebrew endurance/stamina) instead of the proper "Shibbolet" (which is the word for a stalk of grain). The Gileadites then would determine Ephraimites by their wrong pronounciation of Shibbolet and strike them dead. I can just imagine an Ephraimite outraging : "Maaan, it's just a word! everybody says it that way! who cares?!!" just before a blade came crushing through his skull.

1. There's more evidence that "thrash metal" was employed in reference to the style of punk-influenced metal bands (like some of those mentioned above) and the demographic and behavioral shift occurring at shows in the mid-to-late Eighties (and reasonably so…"thrash" being a common slang term for slam-dancing as well as drumming style) then there is that it was cooked up by magazines for commercial purposes. (Where did the term "speed metal” originate, exactly?)

2. As a description of a particular scene or style of music, “thrash” was still barely defined by mid-Eighties (and predates Anus favorites like C.O.C and D.R.I.), which is probably why even a traceable, press-created term like “crossover” became roundly accepted at the time.

Fanzines - in other words, from within the subculture itself, rather than being imposed by the corporate glossies seeking to max out ad revenues.

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2. As a description of a particular scene or style of music, “thrash” was still barely defined by mid-Eighties (and predates Anus favorites like C.O.C and D.R.I.), which is probably why even a traceable, press-created term like “crossover” became roundly accepted at the time.

D.R.I. and Corrosion of Conformity were both well established by 1983/84, when 'thrash' (speed) metal took off, so I'm not exactly sure what point you're trying to raise here.

The picture overall is a lot more complex than is typically appreciated, in any event. There were three or four separate genres emerging from pretty much the same primordial stew of punk, hardcore, and heavy metal. Apocalyptic Raids and Bathory and Ride the Lightning are pretty much exactly contemporaneous. Death metal emerged pretty essentially fully formed by the summer of 1985. The early grind bands hadn't yet managed to get record deals, but grind was certainly already extant and viable by the same time. In the three years between spanning the summer of 1982 to the summer of 1985, the extreme edge went from Iron Maiden and Discharge to Sepultura, Bathory and Genocide/Repulsion. That kind of evolutionary pace is impossible for the language to keep up with, except in retrospect.